The IAC joins the cultural and educational initiatives to help confront Covid-19 with the campaign "#IACUniversoEnCasa"

Confronted by the health emergency generated by COVID-19, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) wants to help by letting the citizen’s responsibility implied by staying at home be an opportunity to bring everyone closer to astronomy and knowledge of the universe, as well as continuing to offer training and support to the educational community, which is carrying on with its work by Internet. With this objective, we at the Press and Outreach Unit (UC3) have set in motion a plan of activities with the name "#IACUniversoEnCasa" (IAC Universe at Home) about which we will be issuing information as time goes on.

This initiative will include a variety of outreach contents: articles, interviews, reports, videos, popular lectures, passtimes, curiosities, competitions, etc., either made for the purpose or recovered from previous publications, which can be consulted on our web (https://www.iac.es/en), in the blog “Vía Láctea s/n” (https://www.iac.es/es/blog/vialactea) and on our social media. This way, the IAC joins the many initiatives of this type which are being developed within the framework of the campaign “#QuédateEnCasa” (“Stay at Home”).

We will also share some of the daily broadcasts of astronomical events from the channel http://sky-live.tv/ which will begin on Monday, March 23rd, from 19:00 UT (20:00 in the Peninsula). The channel will offer broadcast talks by experts in Astronomy, in answer to questions from the public, and images of sunset form the Teide Observatory, via the remote cameras of sky-live.tv.

In addition, and using tele-working systems, we will continue with our usual activity, producing news and information related to our Institute, with our editions and projects, and with attention to the media, to teachers, and to the general public by telephone, or by email (prensa [at] iac.es) and in our social media:

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The evolutionary history of the Milky Way determined in more detail than ever

Thanks to data from the Gaia mission, of the European Space Agency (ESA), and international team led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has presented a study which shows the crucial role of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy in the evolution of our galaxy. These results, published in the magazine Nature Astronomy, also hint that the Sun might have been formed due to one of the interactions of this nearby galaxy with the Milky Way.

An international team of astronomers, science educators, and film-makers, with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) made a ten day visit to the Saharaui refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, and organized Astronomy outreach and educational activities, within the framework of the project “Amanar, under the same sky”.